Where is Ruth II ?

I must admit if I had had the time to think it through I would have been apprehensive heading into this 11 day passage between Bora Bora and Fiji . However it was so busy leaving Ireland I had to adopt my usual one day at a time approach . The day after we landed we headed out as a crew of three James Liam and I . I was given the easy watches 5 am to 9am and 5 pm to 9pm Sunrise and sunset (allowing plenty of time for early morning exercise) . I was determined not to be the"" weakest link "and am pleased to say Liam only had to sleep in the cockpit a couple of times including this am when we had a 35 knt squall and I was delighted to have him ! My impressions of South Pacific ? - very isolated. We have seen approximately 6 birds one pod of pygmy killer whales ( identified with John Finlay's book!) one cargo ship and one yacht in 10 days. It made the Atlantic seem like the N11. Housekeeping with three on board has been a breeze and consequently I have finished fou

This is our seventh day at sea - well over half way. Apart from the heat, the most striking thing about this passage has been the sheer solitude. We have seen only one ship and three birds in an entire week. The radio has never even crackled. Yesterday our depth sounder suddenly and consistently showed us with a depth of 7 meters for about half an hour when we should have had kilometres under our keel, so I guess we had company of a sort - something large swimming along underneath us for a while. I spent much of yesterday deciding and setting out how we would cross the Tongan ridge , which lies between us and our destination. The charts are different here, full of foreboding about volcanos exploding, , tsunami warning buoys and the like. They show sites where the ocean had sudden earth burps, throwing up pumice rock to the surface . No shipping to get in our way , just end-of-days natural disasters kind of stuff. We don't dwell on that of course, and get on with our daily

Day three of our ten / 11 day passage to Fiji from Bora Bora. And the heat just overwhelms everything. I don't remember ever being this hot or this thirsty - you need to drink litres and litres of water just not to pass out. My forearms arms leaving puddles on the nav desk I type. The. wind is really light - 8 - 10 knots behind us and I'm being mean with the generator and therefor any aircon until I know we have enough fuel to get us there . We need it for generation as well as propulsion. We've got the trade. wind sail up at the moment, and are slipping along at 5 - 6 knots. Not great, but every hour sailed is another hour cooling later on. In the meantime we all just sweat. And sweat. There are three of us on board - Ruth , James and myself. Conall was meant to do the passage, but given that we had to delay our departure to get the water maker up and running ( God Bless James ), I couldn't guarantee that we would get there I time for him to make a very importan

Eventually getting around to reporting in after a two week tour of duty on Bora Bora. The first week was with Liam, Kevin, Donal and James. You may have noticed the absence of any females from that list. The second was with Liz, and again skipper James.  That first week passed in a blur, and I can honestly say it was activity, rather than jet lag or alcohol induced. Well, kind of anyway. Liam had spent the previous ten days here checking out every anchorage, mooring, restaurant, dive centre, beach, coral garden that the islands of Bora Bora, Ta'haa and Raiatea have to offer. And so, the first day began with a routine trip to three snorkelling spots, initially on a Coral reef, then moving to a black tip shark dive , then a place with sting rays. For the three of us just off a 30 hour flight, it was pretty surreal. It got more surreal at dinner at Lucky House that evening where we were somewhat intrigued by the cailín/ buachaill who looked after us. Still a mystery, h